Clothed in our fancy garb of colored cloth,
We spin around the ballroom in our dance.
We float about on wings of dainty moth.
We dream our dreams of myst'ry and romance.

And yet why do we wear these feathered masks?
We hide our face because it's all an act.
We're players on the stage: it is our task
To entertain the crowd and to enact
A show where we take on another role.
We play the part that they assign us to,
And to please them is our only goal.
We dance for them until they say we're through.

When we conform we join this strange ballet,
And watch our own identities decay.

Your smile is humble, your laugh enchants.
As we walk back home I absorb your words,
your coy allusions to some past romance,
your mentions of your discerning taste,
of how you only drink expensive wine
and how French Roast is superior to Pikes Place.
And your breath quickens as you recount that time
years ago, when you were in Europe and
you single handedly rescued your family
with your Spanish and now you’ve gained the upper hand
by casually admitting you’ve seen every film I’ve seen
and more and even read the books they’d been adapted from and—
You’re speaking only beguiling lies.
I wish I could just tell you to shut up.

On the swampy fields of an exhausted war
Of a country torn apart in strife,
Warriors fight for their own causes,
For peace
For bread
For glory.
But one has loyalty to neither side.
A shadow
A snake
A Traitor.
A spy infiltrating their defenses.
She knows all their secrets, and yet she knows nothing—
For who doesn’t question the point of their existence?
She knows nothing of the future.
Why try? You find nothing by searching the murky waters of destiny.
And nothing is what she cares about.
She leads a lonely life.
A mercenary
A thief
A Snitch.
The **** of existence.
But it’s an interesting life.

At least for the time being.

The Artist waits, breathing deeply,
Pencil poised above the paper.
Images grip her, alluring her to tell their story.
Battles rage ‘tween fearsome pirates, horses race from untold horrors,
Magic glitters on a fairy’s pale hand.

And she fumbles with her pencil,
And soon crumbles up her latest attempt at
A Masterpiece.
Everything’s been done before, everything’s so simple,
Nothing is dramatic, detailed enough
To soothe the artist’s longing
To go further in her art than she has ever gone before.

Then it hits her, hits her hard,
And she awakes from her reverie with a start.
It’s   all   fake.  It’s not real.
The things she dreamed up with her mind, but loved with all her heart.
Everything she’s shaped… given life…
Everything she draws… or reads… or writes,
It’s not real.
Just some stupid Fantasy.

She sits there, sighing deeply,
Paper blank before her eyes.
But she then realizes,
Abruptly,
That then, without a doubt,
Those things may not be real, but for her they’re really there!
All the art that she’s critiqued and
All the worlds she’s created,
Serve a Purpose.

They help to soothe an Artist’s troubled heart.

A Spectrum—
Cobalt to cherry and back to blue,
With fifteen shades of gray not knowing their place—
Fans out across the artist’s desk.

Her Fingers—
Nimble birds,
Skim across the sea of colors, and,
Quickly,
Dive plucking a turquoise pencil from the waves.

When you pulled me close in the Culvers parking lot
leaning across the wide expanse of center console
the seat belt digging into my shoulder
my lips tingled
as you told me you’d wanted to do that for a while.  
And I wanted you to do it for a while
but before I knew it you were gone and
I was alone in my Mini outside the movie theatre
wishing we were in the same state.  
But even if we were both in Illinois
you’d be in some altered state
in some other parking lot in some other car
with some other girl.